I talk with a lot of you so I know there are an inordinate number of people who homeschool their kids because their kids are training for the Olympics, or are prodigies in chess or music…. the type of kids who are extremely specialized and do their thing all day and schedule tutors after their special thing. Of course there are a lot of those people. I was one of them.
My son wanted to read The Communist Manifesto, and I told him, “Just read a summary.”
He scowled.
“I majored in political history and I read very few books. You don’t have to read books.” Read more
If you are a woman who gets along better with men than women, you know who you are.
Girls became weirder and weirder to you. Until you found your spot with the intellectuals. The logical thinkers. The people who did math and science, perhaps. Or the people who memorized stuff. The groups that—science explains—are mostly boys. Read more
I am not sure if this is good news or bad news, but it’s pretty clear to me that the purpose of school is to teach kids to be PC. Because how else will you do it? Think of all the major shifts in the social mores of the US: schools were the focal point for civil rights, for example. Evolution plays out in schools. And now, LGBTQ rights are playing out in schools. Schools teach kids how to succeed in a world different from their parents.
The hardest part of homeschooling is not making the decisions about education. It’s dealing with social scrutiny of the decisions we make about education. I have found that social scrutiny falls into three categories: Read more
I love writing on this blog, but if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not sure I’d write here if I didn’t need to support my family. It’s true that I started writing about education because I wanted to figure out what to do with education for my own family. But it’s also true that writing a blog is a lot of work. Read more
As I wrote this title, I realize it’s not just parent routine that’s important for homeschool success, it’s parent self-care. Read more
This is a guest post from Elizabeth, who comments here as YesMyKidsAreSocialized. She is the mother to three girls.
We lost our education network in the move. While we were still in Southern California, we had everything we needed for homeschooling the kids — from mentors and teachers all the way to support from local businesses, which offered opportunities during the day for homeschoolers, when other kids are in school. The charter school even gave us approximately $3,000 per kid (that’s $9,000 a year!) to help with paying for all our classes, lessons, books, art supplies, field trips, and more. Read more
Melissa told me about a new company that makes makeup in extra small sizes to fit in a purse. Most company ideas are terrible, so when I hear about a new company I start thinking about why it’s terrible. Read more
I’m reading this book that is so great that I almost want to start a reading group so we can discuss each chapter. It’s called Childhood in America, and it’s a 700-page anthology of three-page excerpts from scholarly writing about childhood.